Latest Colloidal crystal Stories

Using an acoustic metadevice that can influence the acoustic space and can control any of the ways in which waves travel, engineers have demonstrated, for the first time, that it is possible to dynamically alter the geometry of a three-dimensional colloidal crystal in real time.

Physicists from the University of Pennsylvania and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have reported an elegant experimental study of the melting behaviors of thin crystalline films, uncovering a variety of interesting differences between thick films of greater than four layers and thinner or single-layer films.

By Shelley, Suzanne MATERIALS Chemical engineers have developed a "self-assembling" method that could allow optical devices to be made less expensively than conventional processes, which require complex etching and other techniques common in the semiconductor industry.